Change entire reel from hard cuts to cross fades…automate or script it?

Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

Change entire reel from hard cuts to cross fades…automate or script it?

Posted by Alex Melli on April 10, 2009 at 5:58 am

Hello everyone,
I’m trying to figure out how to script/automate and extremely repetitive process, that I think a lot of editors must do. I’m trying to convert an entire reel of footage FROM raw footage with hard cuts where the camera was stopped then started INTO the same entire reel of footage with crossfade transitions every time the camera was stopped then started.

Here is what I do by hand:
I import an hour of footage, then run “DV Start/Stop Detect” and then I’ve got markers for every cut (every time the camera stopped rolling). I manually razor blade at each marker, the ripple edit half a second to left, then ripple edit half a second on the right, then apply the default transition (1 sec cross dissolve) and I’m done!

It goes quickly, but when preparing an hour of footage with over 100 segments, it gets *very* monotonous! Ideally, I’d like to be able to automate the entire process, but even if it was some sort of script that I run at each marker, that would be better…any ideas anyone??

–p.s. I already tried manually razoring at each marker, and dragging all clips to the “overwrite with transition”…which in theory works perfectly, but it results in the hard cut crossfading into the other hard cut, which gets you exactly where we started!
–p.p.s. Maybe even QuicKeys or something like that is an option…

again, any input is appreciated!
-Alex

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Alex Melli replied 17 years, 5 months ago 4 Members · 4 Replies
4 Replies

Sean Oneil
April 10, 2009 at 7:50 pm

Contact Andreas Kiel. This is what he does. Here is his website:
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools/

Sean
Andreas Kiel
April 11, 2009 at 2:57 pm

Hi Sean,

Thanks for recommending me.

How are things over there in these times?

Regards
Andreas

Spherico
https://www.spherico.com/filmtools
Andy Mees
April 11, 2009 at 4:11 pm

Once you’ve run the DV Start/Stop Detect then twiddle open the disclosure triangle and drag the Markers to the timeline, then you can use QuickKeys or similar macro app to automate the trimming and adding a dissolve at each cut point … have a look at the free “Spark” app from ShadowLabs, or “VideoMacro” from VideoToolshed.

If, for example, you set the following macro to a hot key, then on each hotkey press it should scoot to the next edit point, trim each side and add the default transition. Set it to repeat and it should do a whole timeline

DOWN ARROW
-15
CTRL V
X
SHIFT DELETE
+15
CTRL V
LEFT ARROW
X
SHIFT DELETE
CMD T

Good luck
Andy
Alex Melli
April 13, 2009 at 11:16 pm

Thanks so much for everyone’s replies, and Andy, the bit you wrote seems to be exactly what I was looking for! I appreciate your help on this, in addition to the QuicKeys alternatives…nice!!
Sincerely and with gratitude for the community spirit,
-Alex
https://www.suktion.com

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